


Persuasion

by Philosopher_King



Series: Whatever is done from love [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bottom Loki (Marvel), Brief mention of past Grandmaster/Loki, Condoms, Erotic Electrostimulation, Jealous Thor (Marvel), Lichtenberg Figures, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, Light Masochism, Light Sadism, Lightning Sex, Loki's new mind-reading powers, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Porn with Talking, Possessive Thor (Marvel), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Protected Sex, Scar Fetish, Sibling Incest, Telepathy, Top Thor (Marvel), Unsafe Sex, because this is very, which is not at all the same thing as safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:26:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: In Thor's cabin aboard the Asgardian Ark, Thor and Loki are reunited; their reunion reflects the many ways in which both have learned and changed, as well as the many ways in which nothing has changed at all.





	Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

> I had some mixed feelings about the electrocution scene in _Thor: Ragnarok_ , so I worked them out in mildly sadomasochistic lightning sex. The idea about the Lichtenberg figures was inspired by [this gorgeous work of fanart](http://philosopherking1887.tumblr.com/post/168706050185/wolf-zaa-philosopherking1887) by [wolf-zaa](http://wolf-zaa.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. This is undoubtedly the filthiest thing I've ever written. I'm sort of torn between "I'm so ashamed" and "I regret nothing."
> 
> As usual, this fic takes place in the same timeline as all the fics in my Thorki series "Whatever is done from love" except for "Starting Over," which isn't _Ragnarok_ -compliant and is therefore off on a different branch of the timeline. There are little references to some dialogue in [The Paradox of Desire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7117072), the events of [Winter, Autumn, and Spring](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7779421/chapters/17745055), and something that was revealed in [Fraternizing with the Enemy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6819373); the latter and some other events referenced in this fic are drawn from my Loki-in-the-Void fic [The Abyss Gazes Also](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5236796/chapters/17108125). But for the most part, you can get the idea without having read any of those.
> 
> Please disregard the Austen-esque title; it has nothing at all to do with the book by Jane Austen.

“If you were here, I might even give you a hug,” Thor said lightly, careful not to betray any foolish _sentiment_.  He threw the silver stopper that he held in his hand, fully expecting it to create a momentary glitch in the perfect image of Loki’s shoulder before striking the wall.  He could even hear in his head the dull _clunk_ it would make.

It didn’t.  Instead Loki’s hand rose to catch it, and it landed with a soft clap against his palm.  “I’m here,” Loki said with a tiny smile.

Thor’s heart seemed to surge toward his throat.  A sharp new ache in his chest came to join and amplify the dull ache that had persisted since the beating he had taken from Hela.  Still, it would not do to trust too much too soon.  He held out his arms, but remained where he stood.

Loki’s eyes narrowed.  “Once more, you require me to make the first move,” he observed, his tone as deliberately light as Thor’s had been, making a show of examining the carved stopper in his hand.

Thor sighed and dropped his arms.  “I’m tired of fighting, Loki.”

“So am I.”

“For years it was me who reached out for you, only to have you slap my hand away.”

“Because you wanted things to go back to the way they were.”  Beneath his calm, measured words, Loki’s voice was sharp and cold.

“Things can never go back to the way they were.”

“So much the better,” Loki remarked airily.  He tossed the stopper into the air and then caught it again.

Thor felt the words like a blow to his already-aching chest.  “Our father is dead,” he bit out.  “Our friends are dead.  Our home is gone.  And this pleases you?”

“Not as such,” Loki said carefully.  “But there are always advantages to be found, for someone like me.  Perhaps now Asgardians will learn the value of cleverness and cunning as well as courage.  Perhaps they will even learn not to fear and loathe all change.”

“And us?” Thor asked, his voice softened.  “Can we not go back to the way we were?”

Loki laughed harshly, and his grip on the stopper turned white-knuckled.  “No, Thor.  I have learned my worth; I will no longer be content to trade my love and service for your neglect and disdain, and keep crawling back to you for more of the same.  Offer me the same bargain now and I will leave forever, and never look back.”

Thor almost felt the need to stagger backwards under the onslaught of barbed words.  “My _disdain?_  I told you before—I never had anything but respect and admiration for you.”

“And how was I to know that?” Loki asked icily.  “I couldn’t read minds.”

“ _Couldn’t?”_ Thor thought there was something curious about his use of the past tense.

“Couldn’t and can’t,” Loki snapped, a little too quickly.

Thor resolved to inquire into that later; calming Loki’s ire was a much more pressing matter at the moment.  “Well, I know now that I must assure you of my respect and admiration from time to time.”

“This has been quite the learning experience for all of us, hasn’t it?” Loki said dryly.  He tossed the bottle stopper back and forth between his hands a few times—an outlet, it seemed, for his nervous energy.

Thor exhaled a little laugh through his nose, then cleared his throat before returning to the question he had meant to ask.  “But… are there not some respects in which things might be the same between us?”

Loki snorted.  “After all these years—and years spent with your vulgar Midgardian friends!—you still have not learned to speak it aloud.  I believe what you mean to say is ‘Can we still fuck?’”

Thor flinched.  In a low voice he replied, “No, what I meant to say is: might we be lovers again?”

Something flickered in Loki’s eyes, some secret desire or pain.  But he hid it quickly and with a wry, knowing smile and another toss of the bottle stopper, he said, “If you want me, I am here.”

And somehow, after all that, Loki had talked Thor into making the first move.  The sword had never been Loki’s best weapon, but he was a peerless fencer with words; Thor never had any hope of defeating him unless he was disarmed.  Not having access to an electric shock device that could paralyze his tongue (along with the rest of him), Thor tried a different tactic: he crossed the room in three strides, pinned Loki against the door with his hands around Loki’s upper arms and the length of his body pressed against his brother’s, stopped his mouth and stilled that silver tongue with his own.

Loki’s body, already tense with barely-contained anger and anxiety, tensed further, then after a moment suddenly relaxed.  His hand opened and the bottle stopper fell heavily to the floor, and then his hands, their movement constrained by Thor’s grip on his arms, came to rest at Thor’s hips, while he returned the kiss with matching ferocity.

“I will always want you,” Thor whispered harshly against Loki’s ear when they parted for breath.

“Now, now, what have I said about making oaths you don’t know you can keep?” Loki teased him.  His mock-cheerful tone could not quite mask the sadness underneath.

“I—will—always—want you,” Thor repeated, punctuating the growled words with nips and kisses to Loki’s ear, his jaw, the side of his neck, the base of his throat, while Loki tilted his head back and closed his eyes, his lips parted in a soundless sigh.  Loki’s new tunic looked too complicated to remove without assistance from the wearer (and he knew Loki would be none too pleased if he simply ripped it off), so Thor knelt to deal with the trousers, which looked more promising.

But he groaned and clutched at his side as soon as his knees hit the floor: the abrupt movement had painfully jolted his battered body.  A wave of black rolled in front of his vision and he feared he might faint, but when he could see again a moment later he was still kneeling and Loki was crouched in front of him, one hand gripping his shoulder and the other gently probing his side, peering upward to gaze with obvious concern into Thor’s eye.  “Thor!” he said insistently; it seemed it was not the first time he had said the name.  “Are you all right?  What is it?”

Thor took in a slow breath, careful not to strain his chest.  “It’s nothing—probably just some bruising, maybe a few cracked ribs.  I should have known not to make any sudden moves…”

“Why haven’t you gone to a healer about this?” Loki asked sharply.  The way his worry came out as scolding reminded Thor all too vividly of their mother.

“No time,” Thor answered gruffly.  “Too many wounded, too few healers.  The eye was the most urgent problem, so I had that seen to and told them not to bother with the rest.”

Loki looked somewhat mollified.  “Well, let me deal with it, then.  Let’s get this off…”  His nimble fingers made short work of the lacing of Thor’s breastplate, then he gently helped Thor tug the undershirt off over his head, wincing in sympathy when Thor groaned again at the movement of raising his arms.

“Can you stand up?” Loki asked, still strangely gentle after all the violence of his earlier words.  Thor nodded, and Loki rose with him, one bracing hand on his back and the other under his elbow.  “On the bed,” he ordered, and Thor obeyed, first sitting stiffly on the edge, then gingerly stretching out on his back.

“You didn’t show nearly this much concern when the Hulk was smashing me all over the Grandmaster’s arena,” Thor pointed out with a wry smile, recalling how Loki’s triumphant cheers had echoed from the Grandmaster’s box.

“That was different.  That was payback.  This is Hela, and there’s nothing at all funny about her.”

“No, indeed.”

Loki bent over him and began running his fingers lightly over Thor’s chest, his sides, his abdomen.  His eyes were closed in concentration, or perhaps to access his seiðr (Thor was never entirely certain how that worked), and his brow was furrowed as if in pain.  There was plainly nothing at all sensual in his touch, but Thor nonetheless felt his nipples stiffen, felt heat gather once more in his belly and his cock start to rise and harden.  He saw Loki’s cheeks flush as if in answer to his own arousal, then Loki opened his eyes and said, “Really, Thor, I’m trying to work here.”

Thor felt his face flush even hotter, not only with arousal, and mumbled, “How could you tell?”

Loki coughed, his own blush rising as well, and said, “In order to do this without any of a healer’s tools, I must be… very closely attuned to your body.”  He cleared his throat and straightened his back with a barely perceptible wince.  “Since I am not a trained healer, there isn’t much I can do for you that your body and your own seiðr aren’t doing already.”

“My own… what?”

“Your seiðr, Thor,” Loki repeated irritably.  “Where did you think all that lightning was coming from?  Your electrifying personality?  Your sparkling wit?”

“Oh!  I didn’t think that was… oh.”  Thor fell silent, chewing over this new piece of information.  Something else he would have to ask Loki to elaborate on later.

“Fortunately,” Loki continued, “I _can_ tell that you are healing well—nothing is setting improperly or still bleeding internally.”

 _‘Still’?_ “And if it had been…?”

“I would have told you to stop attempting to seduce me—very clumsily, I might add—and go see a real healer right away.  As it is, I can lessen the pain somewhat—as long as you promise not to do anything idiotic just because you can’t feel the damage you’re doing.”

“What would count as ‘doing something idiotic’?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Loki said pointedly.  “ _Moving_ too much?  Changing positions abruptly?”

“Would it be idiotic to continue the seduction attempt…?” Thor asked, lowering his eye to gaze up at Loki through the lush eyelashes he still had left to him.

Loki rolled his eyes, but couldn’t suppress a smile.  “As your healer for the nonce, I wouldn’t recommend it.”  Thor opened his mouth to protest, but Loki continued, his voice lowering to a purr, “I think you should instead let me see to you.”

Loki pressed his fingers lightly to Thor’s ribs again, and with a soft flare of green light and a surge of warmth, Thor felt the pain in his chest subside.  Then Loki reached for some hidden fastening at the side of his tunic, grasped something small and pulled downward.  A _zipper_ : Thor recognized the mechanism from Midgardian clothing.  Then Loki was pulling the tunic and undershirt off over his head, kneeling on the bed with his legs astride Thor’s, leaning over him to kiss him again.  Thor wanted him to, more than anything… but he couldn’t help but be distracted by the thick vertical scar in the center of Loki’s chest, which he reached up to trace even as Loki’s lips met his.

Loki pulled away sharply when he felt the touch of Thor’s fingers and sat back, crouching over his thighs.  “What?” he demanded.

“How did you survive?” Thor asked.  His anger at Loki’s deception was, even now, drowned by the memory of his grief at Loki’s (apparent) death; his voice cracked as he recalled the terrible moment when he saw the blade go through his brother’s chest, when he felt Loki’s body go still in his arms.  Knowing, now, how Loki had always doubted Thor’s regard for him, he thought he could understand why he might wish to watch, again and again, the moment when Thor’s howl of raw anguish could leave no doubt as to the reality of his love.

Loki shrugged, looking uncomfortable.  “Aesir or Jötunn, my body heals as quickly and as well as yours; and Kurse’s blade didn’t hit anything vital…”

“Was that deliberate?” Thor cut in, trying in vain to meet Loki’s shifting gaze.  “Did you know that you would survive, when you said what you said to me?”  Thor could still hear it in his head; the Norns knew he had replayed it for himself often enough, waking or in dreams.  _“I’m a fool.  I’m a fool.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry … I didn’t do it for him.”_ Thor shook his head slightly, trying to banish a ghost that no longer had the right to haunt him.  “Were you planning to fake your death from the moment I freed you from your cell?”

Loki gave an uneasy laugh.  “Come, now, you can’t expect an illusionist to give up all his secrets.”

Anger flared in Thor’s belly, which strangely enough seemed to rekindle the arousal that had faded with remembered pain.  “This was no stage-magician’s vanishing act, Loki.  _You made me believe you were dead._   Again.  You forced me to mourn you, _again_.”

Loki’s nostrils flared and the set of his mouth hardened.  “And could you blame me if I had planned it, knowing what awaited me if I returned alive?  A lifetime in captivity?”  Thor opened his mouth to respond, but Loki raised his voice and charged on: “ _‘And afterward this cell,’_ that’s what you promised me.  Should I have let you bury me alive again?  Better to let you bury me in your mind.”

“So you planned it,” Thor accused him.

“What does it matter?” Loki snapped.  “Either way, I lied to you; I let you think that I was dead; I let you mourn needlessly.  I had my reasons, many of them good ones, so I cannot say that I am sorry I did it.”  His voice was softer when he added, “But I can say that I am sorry I grieved you; that was not my intention.”

“‘Not your _intention’?_   What in _Hel_ do you mean by that? You knew how I—”  Thor stopped short.  No, evidently, Loki had not known how Thor loved him, how he would grieve.  Loki’s pained and knowing gaze told him the same thing.

“I was broken,” Thor said quietly.  “For three years, I was broken.  Jane knew it; she knew that my heart was not truly with her.  No, don’t give me that look,” Thor rebuked him when Loki’s mouth curled into a silent sneer.  “She was a distant second choice when the one I truly wanted had turned me away.”  Loki’s lips tightened; he still seemed doubtful.

“I never said it often enough, so hear this now and believe it: I love you.”  Thor tried to sit up to reach for Loki’s face, but Loki put a hand to his shoulder, gentle yet firm, and shook his head.  Thor settled for grasping Loki’s hand in his own, interlacing their fingers.  “I love you more than life, more than honor, more than the promise of Valhalla itself.”

“Funny way to show it—leaving me behind on Sakaar, convulsing helplessly, vulnerable to whoever should happen along,” Loki said coldly, his lip curling again.

“That hardly compares to the least of what you’ve done, still claiming to love me,” Thor rejoined—though if he was honest with himself, guilt was a good part of what pushed him into defensiveness.  Loki started to pull his hand away, looking ready to spit poison; Thor tightened his grip and reached out to settle the other hand soothingly on Loki’s hip.  He drew a breath and paused, searching for the words to explain.  “I love you too much to keep letting you sabotage yourself,” he said at last.

“How very charitable of you,” Loki sneered, but his eyes were thoughtful; his waspish retort seemed more reflexive than sincere.

Thor sighed and closed his eye.  “I’m so tired, Loki,” he said again.  “I don’t want to fight you anymore.”

“Then maybe you should stop asking impertinent questions,” Loki said, but there was playfulness in his snappish tone.

Thor opened his eye a crack and said, “From now on I shall ask only the most pertinent questions.  Such as: why are we still wearing so much clothing?”

“Maybe because _someone_ collapsed in the middle of a seduction attempt and I was forced to deal with it.  And then he started asking impertinent questions.”

“Perhaps I should rephrase.  Would you be so good as to remove all this troublesome clothing?”

“I suppose I could be that good, yes.”

Loki rose from the bed and walked to the end of it to pull off Thor’s boots, then leaned over to unfasten and strip off his trousers.  Still standing, he removed his own boots and trousers, then climbed back on the bed to crouch again over Thor’s thighs.  Both of them were only half-hard, some of the earlier urgency having been lost; but Loki was quick to remedy that by stretching his lithe body over Thor’s, bringing both their lips and their cocks together.  He held himself up on his forearms, keeping his weight from settling onto Thor’s bruised torso, but he allowed his pelvis to press against Thor’s so that their hardening pricks slid against each other with each increasingly insistent thrust of their hips.

Thor broke their kiss to say breathlessly, “Another question: will you come up here?”

Loki blinked down at him.  “Come up where?”

Thor reached down to tug lightly at the backs of Loki’s thighs.  “Up here.  Where my head is.”

“Oh!”  Loki sat back on his haunches again and folded his arms.  “I’m not sure it’s proper for a King of Asgard to offer such a service to his lowly subject,” he protested.  Thor wondered whether his disgruntled expression was entirely facetious; for all that Loki claimed he had learned his own worth, Thor still had his doubts.

“Perhaps not, but is certainly proper for a King of Asgard to keep his promises.”

Loki snorted.  “Does an abortive attempt to kneel count as a promise…?”

“I meant the promise I made years ago—that regardless of our places in the wider world, here we would always be equals.”

Something flickered again over Loki’s face, but he quickly composed it again.  “Oh.  Well.”  He bent over again to brush a brief kiss to Thor’s lips—which Thor very much hoped was not a gesture of gratitude—then crawled up the bed to kneel over where Thor’s head rested on the pillow, bracing himself with a hand against the wall.

But when Thor moved to sit up and take Loki’s cock in his mouth, he reached down to put his other hand to Thor’s chest.  “Just a moment,” he said.  Then he removed the cautionary hand to reach into the air and pull a small shiny square seemingly out of nowhere.

“Loki, is that—a condom…?”

Thor couldn’t see Loki’s face very well from this angle, but he thought a hint of color rose into his cheeks.  “Yes, well, I haven’t exactly had time since I returned from Sakaar to go to a healer and get tested… and no, that’s not something I can detect for myself.”

Thor shook his head as if that would help get his thoughts back in order.  “So you…  But I thought…  Did he…?”  Thor’s fragmentary questions became increasingly loud and agitated.

Loki chuckled quietly, then proceeded to tear the packet, take out the little pouch of what looked like sheer fabric, and roll it over the length of his prick.  “Yes, I slept with the Grandmaster—and others, though only at his behest and in his presence.  No, I do not desire anyone but you; that has not changed.  No, he did not force me… not in the way you might imagine.  During my, er, _Wanderjahr_ , I proved not to be above using sex to buy influence, advantage, knowledge… so of course I would not hesitate to trade it for my survival and safety.  Or yours.”

Questions were racing through Thor’s head too fast for his mouth to keep up, so he settled on the most recent, which he thought might also be the least impertinent.  “My safety…?”

“You very nearly showed up his precious green champion.  Who do you think persuaded him to keep you as a second champion rather than having you melted on the spot?”

“I thought the Hulk… he remembered me…”

“Not with his battle rage still up, he didn’t.”

“You bet against me.”

Loki scoffed.  “I love you, but I’m not an idiot.  I had heard the way the Grandmaster spoke of his champion; I knew he would never let him lose.  But I also doubted that any creature he could keep in a gilded cage to perform for his amusement would be able to kill you.”

A cruel, jealous urge briefly tempted Thor to ask, _Not even you?_ But that was not fair, and he had no wish to start another fight.  Instead he let the jealous, possessive impulse, like his anger, coil hotly in his belly and fuel his desire.  Along with Loki’s words: _“I love you, but…”_

Before Loki could delay any more, Thor quickly reached around with both hands to grab Loki’s ass, which was tensed into perfect roundness by the effort of kneeling upright, and pull him forward.  A first lick at the head of his sheathed cock revealed that the Sakaaran condom, unlike the dreadful ones they made in Midgard, was tasteless, and had a silky texture not unlike that of the skin beneath.  Loki groaned with the sudden pleasure and his hips jerked forward.  Thor took his length gradually into his mouth, caressing at the same time with his tongue; he took encouragement from the gasps and slight breathy moans that came from above his head.

But still he could not banish from his mind the thought of other lips stretched around his brother’s cock, other bodies enveloping it, or Loki’s mouth around other cocks, Loki’s body…  _“I proved not to be above using sex to buy influence, advantage, knowledge; of course I would not hesitate to trade it for my survival and safety.”_ The idea struck Thor as deeply _wrong:_ these others whom Loki did not desire trespassing on his flesh, poachers in the sacred forest where only the King may hunt.  He felt the wrongness as a tingling on his tongue and lips, a sharp-sweet metallic taste as of ozone.  He heard a more urgent moan from above, and Loki’s hips jerked forward again, seemingly involuntarily, pushing the head of his cock against the back of Thor’s throat.  Thor gagged momentarily, but he didn’t mind; he wanted to remind Loki of what _he_ could make him feel, to reestablish his sole claim.

Thor’s hand released its grip on one of the fleshy rounds of Loki’s ass to wander into the cleft between them, to brush and tap and press his dry fingers over the knot of muscle that served as the door to his body, both closure and opening.  Loki whined helplessly and his whole body shuddered.  Thor pulled his mouth away from Loki’s cock to ask, “Is this all right?”

“More than all right,” Loki managed to get out; his voice sounded hoarse, almost strangled.

Thor grinned up at him, then took the opportunity to lick one finger very thoroughly before he put his mouth back around his brother’s cock and slid his wetted finger into Loki’s hole.  Loki gasped when it breached him, groaned long and high when it found his prostate.  _Mine,_ Thor thought.  _These sounds are mine, your pleasure is mine.  This body is mine.  You belong to me and no one else._

Then, _“I am my own”_ said Loki’s voice in his head.  He wasn’t sure where it came from; the thought didn’t quite feel like it was his, and the voice seemed too clear and vivid to be merely imagined.  He wondered through an electric haze whether the boundaries between them had finally dissolved so that Loki could now think directly into his mind.

Whether he was replying to Loki or only to another part of himself, Thor thought back to the voice: _To belong to me is to belong to yourself, for I am no more than a part of you._ As he said it he heard, almost as clearly as before, Loki’s voice from nearly a century ago, whispering when he believed himself unheard: _“Because you_ are _part of me, and something feels—missing, when you’re gone.”_ The memory and the new thought twined around each other, blurring together, and the tingling in his mouth was building again, together with a prickling in his fingers as of blood returning to numbed extremities, and he only recalled what that feeling meant the moment before he heard it: a dull crack, not loud in itself, but seeming to echo deafeningly in the small metal-walled room.

Loki’s body convulsed, then went rigid.  Half a second later, he screamed, then slumped against the wall.

Thor had heard Loki make a wide variety of different sounds during sex—neither of them was hesitant about expressing pleasure—but this was not usually one of them.  As quickly and carefully as he could, Thor withdrew his finger from Loki’s body and his mouth from around his cock.  He noticed that spend had collected in the space Loki had left at the end of the condom, but the length it sheathed had barely softened.  “Loki!  Are you all right?” he asked, his voice shaking.  He tried to sit up, but Loki was a limp weight pinning his shoulders, and the effort sent dull pain radiating through his chest.  He grasped Loki’s hip and shook it, trying to rouse him.  “Loki!”

“You just can’t seem to stop electrocuting me, can you?” came Loki’s slurred, muffled voice.

Thor sharply breathed out his relief; if Loki’s sense of humor was intact, he couldn’t be too badly off.  “Did I hurt you?”

“Oh, yes,” Loki replied.  Both his voice and his body trembled with effort as he tried, with feeble arms, to push himself away from the wall.  Guilt stabbed through Thor’s aching chest until Loki added, his voice already stronger, “Please do it again.”

Thor laughed, and it barely hurt at all.  “Can you sit up?” he asked.

Loki gave an answering laugh, sounding a little giddy.  “If you’re suggesting what I think you are, then yes, definitely.”

His legs shook violently at first when he removed his bracing hand from the wall, but after a few moments they steadied until it was only a slight tremor.  He stripped the condom from his prick, careful not to let its contents spill, then vanished it into thin air (Thor chose not to think about where it had gone).  Gingerly, Loki lifted one trembling leg over Thor’s shoulders so that he was kneeling on one side of him, then turned and crawled down the bed and finally swung one leg over Thor’s thighs so that he was kneeling over his hips.

Thor ran a hand over his own stiff prick, aiming both to ease the ache of unfulfilled arousal and to position himself, and Loki put a hand over his.  “Wait,” he said, sounding slightly annoyed, thin lips reproving.  Oh.  Right.

Loki reached into the air again and then he was holding another silver-wrapped condom as well as a small green flask.  He set the flask down among the colorful bottles of liquor on Thor’s bedside table, then tore open the new packet and rolled the sheer cloth over Thor’s length.  “Luckily for us,” he said as he did so, “these appear not to be flammable, and to conduct electricity.”

Thor wasn’t sure whether to laugh or retch at the thought that it might have been flammable.  “It was about time for a little luck,” he said instead.

“Yes, the Norns have been real cunts lately, haven’t they?” Loki mused dryly as he reached for the green flask and pulled its stopper.

“They might have had help,” Thor couldn’t resist pointing out.

Loki said nothing in response; he only pursed his lips and looked intently down at the flask as he tilted it and green-gold oil poured onto his fingers.  It had a sharp-sweet herbal scent, faintly familiar but not quite like anything Thor had ever smelled.

As if reading his thoughts, Loki remarked, “I hadn’t encountered this plant before, but it smells sort of like a lot of other things I know.  Like some cross between eucalyptus, lavender, and basil.”  Trust the seiðmaðr and cross-realm wine connoisseur to be able to identify the exact combination of aromas.  “I also enjoy the pleasant… tingling sensation it produces,” Loki added with a sly smile, reaching a hand behind himself to finish the work that Thor had started.

Thor narrowed his eyes.  He wasn’t pleased at these hints of just how Loki had been occupying his time in the weeks before Thor’s arrival on Sakaar.

Loki, it seemed, understood the meaning of his expression.  He rolled his eyes.  “It’s just sex, Thor.  It’s… the body’s reaction to certain stimuli.”  His voice was slightly breathy, his words punctuated with tiny gasps and sighs, as he worked himself open.  “I’ve certainly had worse lovers than the Grandmaster.  For all his political authoritarianism, he was remarkably egalitarian in bed: he actually shows concern for his partners’ pleasure, which is more than can be said for some.  In a certain frame of mind, I actually enjoyed it… and he was very good about keeping me in that frame of mind.”

“You mean, keeping you drunk?” Thor said harshly.

Loki gave him a _look,_ eyebrows raised and eyelids slightly lowered.  “Yes, Thor.  But you may recall that mind-altering substances have been involved in many of our assignations as well.  Stop trying to dress your possessiveness as protectiveness; your hypocrisy is showing.”

He seemed to have decided that he had done enough to open himself, because when he poured more oil onto his hand it was to slick Thor’s cock over the condom.  He lowered himself slowly, eyes closed and lips parted in an all but silent sigh.

Thor could not hold back a groan of pleasure that felt profoundly like relief—relief less of the ache of a few minutes’ arousal than of the unceasing ache of four years of Loki’s absence… no, six years; no, fourteen years.  He had had lovers during that time, of course (Jane being only the most recent, and the most enduring), but he still felt that his body had been starved.  There was nothing like this; even if Loki was not the most skilled lover he had ever known (though no doubt, a bitter voice in his mind pointed out, he had gained in skill in Thor’s absence), somehow there was immeasurably more pleasure in his touch than in any other.  It was as if his body, too, felt the centuries of their brotherhood, their camaraderie and rivalry and enmity and too many kinds of love to name, humming between their skins, adding weight and power and charge to every touch.

Perhaps Loki felt it, too, because he remained still, with his eyes closed and his breathing shallow, for a few long moments once Thor’s cock was fully inside him.  Then he laughed breathily and opened his eyes to say, “I must admit, you do have… gifts that few others can match.”

Thor gave a sly smile and a low chuckle.  “I think you’ll find that is only the least of my gifts.”

“Is that so?” Loki replied as he began to move his hips, slowly, torturously slowly.  “And I’d thought it was your only redeeming quality.”

Something flared in Thor’s belly once more, a strange mix of impulses—pride, anger, jealousy, the need to prove his superiority—adding heat to his body’s desire.  He grasped Loki’s hips to hold him still and began to thrust into him, not quickly or violently, but with a firmness and steady rhythm that served as well as his burning gaze to communicate his single-minded intent.

Loki gasped out his surprise and put a hand down on the bed to steady himself.  “Thor, your injuries…”

Thor only grinned fiercely, tightened his grip on Loki’s hips, and steadily increased the force and tempo of his thrusts so that Loki had no choice but to dig his fingers into the bedclothes and hold on.  A humming was growing louder in the air around them, static raising the fine hairs on their bodies and adding a soft halo of frizz to Loki’s dark tresses, a prickling sensation building all over Thor’s skin even as some force seemed to tighten at his core.  A flush was rising in Loki’s cheeks and on his pale chest; the ugly scar beneath his breastbone stood out all the more starkly for it, a white ridge outlined in angry red.  Thor’s rage and heartache and relief at the sight of that scar added themselves to the storm building within and without him.

He knew that he could send the power where he wanted it to go, so he directed it toward the places where his body was joined with Loki’s; that was, after all, where the charge was highest, where the tension was greatest, where he felt that something was ready to give way at any moment.  The tingling was building in his fingers again and, almost maddeningly, in his groin; it drove him to thrust ever harder and faster, chasing the release of that tension, until with another dull crack—louder this time—the tingling burst into a jolt of white-hot pleasure.

Loki’s body seized again and he cried out as his reddened cock, bouncing untouched against his tensed abdomen, spurted his seed onto his chest and Thor’s stomach.  He didn’t have much left to spend, having come so recently, and what there was was thin and closer to colorless than white.  Thor released his hold on one of Loki’s hips to run a finger through what had pooled on his stomach, and when he did, he noticed a red mark where his hand had been.  But it was not, as he might have expected, the mere imprint of his fingers’ pressure; instead it resembled a branching tree, a thick red line at Loki’s hipbone dividing into finer, paler lines edging inward onto his belly.  And another tree, he saw, was blooming on Loki’s chest, with the line of the scar as its trunk, branches reaching up toward his collarbones, roots spreading down toward his navel.

“That must hurt,” Thor whispered, his voice raw, more curious and wondering than worried.

“Was that not the goal this time around?” Loki asked.  His voice was scraped equally raw, but Thor could still hear the amusement in it.

“‘This time around’…?”  Oh— _“You just can’t seem to stop electrocuting me, can you?”_   “What kind of question is that?  That was completely different!”

“Was it?”  The amusement in Loki’s voice had an undertone of viciousness.  “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it—having me writhing on my back at your feet, utterly at your mercy…”

Thor could feel heat rising again in his cheeks and only part of it was shame.  He had felt a sick pleasure in it, alongside his disappointment and resignation and perverse hope, but he had thought that it was only the satisfaction of his righteous anger, of holding Loki to account for his planned betrayal.  He wondered now whether Loki was right—whether there had been something else in it, something darker even than his vengefulness.

Still, he insisted, “What we do to each other on the field of battle has no bearing at all on what we do here.”

“No?” Loki asked, running his fingers along the lines of Thor’s stomach and chest, stopping to circle his nipples, eliciting a gasp and a jerk of Thor’s hips.  “Are we not the same hot-blooded young men who rushed off to fuck in the bath after sparring on the practice courts?”  He flattened his hands against Thor’s breastbone and then ran them along his collarbones and over his shoulders, caressing, and leaned down to murmur, low and throaty, “Tell me you don’t love the idea of me as a vanquished enemy for you to have your way with.”

Thor flinched away (as much as he could, lying on his back with Loki sitting atop him), shaking his head.  “No, Loki, I don’t.  I don’t want you ‘at my mercy,’ powerless to refuse.  I would do none of this against your will.”

“Who said anything about it being ‘against my will’?” Loki purred, leaning down further to brush his lips teasingly against Thor’s.  He circled his hips slowly, deliberately, and Thor let out a helpless moan.  He had thought he must have climaxed with the discharge of lightning, so sharp and intense had been the pleasure that attended it, but he found himself still hard and needing within the warm grip of Loki’s body, and he obeyed the urge to thrust up again.

Loki moaned in answer.  His cock, too, was still hard, impossibly, after spending twice in close succession.  Thor reached out a hand to cradle Loki’s balls, which looked diminished and slack; the skin had more give than he was accustomed to, running like velvet over Thor’s fingers as Loki bit his lip and whimpered.  Thor moved his hand up to lightly grip Loki’s cock, which was as stiff and dark as if he had been kept on the edge for the last hour instead of brought to orgasm twice.

“Does this hurt, too?” Thor asked.  His tone of curiosity was somewhat less innocent than before.

Loki nodded, breathing in sharply through his nose.  “But I would not have it otherwise,” he added with a smile—crooked, shaky, but with unmistakable wickedness.

“And this?” Thor asked with a wicked smile of his own as he gave his brother’s swollen cock a slight squeeze.

Loki’s shout of mingled pleasure and pain stirred something strange and dark in Thor’s breast, something akin to his urges toward both punishment and possession of his rebellious brother.  If he thought on it more, it would surely trouble him, but he felt dizzy and drunk on the surges of his newfound power—the power not simply to channel bolts of lightning, but to leave such a signature on his brother’s body, to pull such sounds from his throat.

“What of this?”  Thor released his hold around the length of Loki’s prick to brush his finger against the sensitive place at the underside of the head, sending the tiniest shock of lightning into it as he did.

Loki cried out again, his balls twitched upward as if trying to find something more in them to spend, and his cock jerked before a trickle of clear fluid emerged from the slit.  “Thor, please…” he begged, voice ragged.

“Please what?” Thor asked, warm and patient, even as he twisted his hand mercilessly over the head of Loki’s oversensitive cock, making him choke back a sob.

“Please, the lightning…”

“You want more of it?”  Thor let the tingling gather again in his fingers and his groin, let Loki feel the building energy on his most sensitive skin.

“No!” Loki gasped.  “No, please, I can’t… it won’t let me _finish_.”

“No?  If I’ve been counting correctly, I’ve finished you three times already.”

“Thor, don’t…”  Loki seemed genuinely distraught for a moment before he took a deep breath and collected himself to explain, “It’s a climax without true release.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Thor drawled, giving a playful stroke to Loki’s still-hard length.

Loki whimpered again through tight-shut lips.  “Please, just let us finish as we used to.”

As tempting as his power still was, Thor’s own throbbing cock was urging him to do as Loki bid.  “Very well,” he said, pretending magnanimity.  He released Loki’s cock and made a show of reclining, stretching out his back, resting his head on his interlaced fingers with his elbows out to the sides.  “I think I remember you saying that I should let you see to me.  Very well, Nurse Loki: do your healing work.”

“ _‘Nurse’?_ I’ll answer to nothing less than Chief Healer.”

Loki circled his hips again, slowly at first, gathering speed and force.  He was breathing hard; Thor knew that he had worn his brother out already and was pushing him by demanding that he work for his own release.  But then, that was what they did: each pushed the other to prove his strength and love, each felt the need both to prove it and to see the proof; each tormented the other and kept returning for more torment.

And this, too, was a sweet torment, forcing himself to lie passive and give Loki full responsibility for his pleasure.  But the responsibility was in good hands (so to speak): Loki, like Thor, felt the need to prove his skill, and he was proving it beyond all doubt, pushing past his exhaustion to move his hips with a dancer’s strength and grace, thrusting and clenching and sometimes rising onto his knees so that only the tip of Thor’s cock was still inside him and then sinking back down to engulf him again in silky, tight heat.  Thor watched him through a fog of heady pleasure, trying to savor the feast before his eyes as well as his other senses: the rosy flush and light sheen of sweat highlighting the matchless sculpture of Loki’s face, his slender lips parted for his rasping breaths and sighs of pleasure, the delicate fractal shapes spreading across his chest and hips like growths of coral.  Those marks were Thor’s doing—and more than that, marks that none but he could leave, unlike the usual bites and bruises left behind after urgent lovemaking.  _Mine,_ he thought again.  _Mine to overcome, to overwhelm, to command._

 _Not a vanquished enemy to have your way with, eh?_ said a voice in his head, and once more it was hard to say whether it was his own thoughts taking on Loki’s voice to take his part, or Loki himself, somehow thinking into Thor’s mind through the link between their bodies.

 _Mine also to surrender and submit to, mine to obey,_ Thor replied.

 _Our love is a constant battle that we both always win and always lose,_ said Loki’s voice.

 _But would we have it otherwise?_ Thor wondered.  No answer came from either voice in his mind.

The pleasure was growing steadily with all of Loki’s masterful efforts, and finally Thor squeezed his eyes shut, grasped at the ragged remains of his own hair to keep himself from reaching to still Loki’s hips, and spilled (into the condom that he had, fortunately, been able to forget was there).  The stuttering, instinctive motions of his hips made a jarring counter-rhythm against the steady, relentless undulating dance of Loki’s; but as soon as Loki felt it, his rhythm began to falter.  He leaned back one last time so that the head of Thor’s cock would strike against his prostate and wrapped a careful hand around his own length, and after only one tentative stroke his eyes shut tight and he heaved a great shuddering sigh while his muscles clenched almost painfully around Thor’s sensitized, slowly softening prick.

There was nothing on Loki’s hand when he pulled it away from his cock, which was finally beginning to soften as well, and to return to its usual rosy pink.  Thor felt a strange swell of pride at that: he had drained Loki completely dry, made him spend all he had inside him.  And as the dark flush left his prick, Thor could see another one of those coral-red trees, the trunk beginning from the point on the underside where the lightning had touched it, finer branches spreading down its length to disappear into the dark hair at the base.  Thor reached out a careful finger to trace one of its branches, and Loki hissed in pain and swatted him away.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said, and he thought he meant it.  “I’m sure that hurts even more than the others.”

“Oh, you’re not sorry in the least,” Loki huffed, and Thor didn’t contest the point.

With a groan Loki rose gingerly to his knees, then pulled the full condom off Thor’s cock and banished it to Norns-knew-where.  “At least those make clean-up easier,” he remarked as he flopped on his back beside Thor.  “Budge up, would you?” he added, too tired to really sound irritable.  “This bed is too damned small.”  It was; Loki’s leg was draped over the edge.  Thor shifted over as far as he could without leaving one of his own limbs dangling.

“As soon as I’m healed,” Thor remarked mildly, “I want to do that with our places reversed.”  Perhaps with Loki inside _him_ instead; he was curious about what he could do to Loki that way.

“So you _do_ want me on my back,” Loki said dryly.

“Yes,” Thor said, reaching a hand over to skim over Loki’s clavicles and the hollow of his throat, just above where the welts ended.  “Convulsing helplessly, paralyzed with pleasure.”  _Hair spread out like a dark sun on the ground… or on the pillow,_ he thought, recalling how Loki had looked on the floor of the Grandmaster’s hangar, strangely beautiful in his fear and distress.  “Pleasure that only I can give you.”

“As soon as you’re healed… we’ll see.”

Thor gently nudged Loki to turn onto his side, facing away from Thor, so that he could cradle his brother from behind as he used to—and so that he would not be touching the stinging welts that his lightning had left on Loki’s front.  In that position, he was inescapably confronted, as he had known he would be, with the mass of flogging scars crisscrossing Loki’s back.  They were evidence that someone else had marked him in the year between his fall and his appearance in Midgard—and far more permanently than Thor could.  He knew that the lightning trees would fade after a few days, or weeks at most, but these would be with Loki forever.

Thor silently, gently ran his fingers over some of the scars between Loki’s shoulder blades.  Loki’s whole body tensed.  “Not now, Thor,” he warned.

“Not now,” Thor agreed, his voice low and soothing.  “But when you’re ready.”

“Soon,” Loki promised.

“You’ll stay, then?”  Thor hadn’t intended for that to sound quite as plaintive as it came out.

“If you can persuade me it’s in my best interests, then yes, I’ll stay.”

“Persuade you?” Thor repeated, feeling his hopes deflate.  “How?”

“Well, you’ve been doing an excellent job of it so far,” Loki said with a note of wry amusement.

“Ah, I see.  Good to know.”  Thor thought he could manage to muster many more such persuasive arguments.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 7800 words of almost pure porn, with a bit of obligatory talking. I think I'm ashamed.
> 
> Please, please leave comments!! You can even tell me what you didn't like; I'm open to constructive criticism.


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